Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking

The author of Zero chronicles the last half century's haphazard attempt to harness fusion energy, describing how governments and research teams throughout the world have employed measures ranging from the controversial to the humorous, in an account that introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science: the brilliant and tortured Andrei Sakharov; the monomaniacal and Strangelovean Edward Teller; Ronald Richter, the secretive physicist whose lies embarrassed an entire country; and Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two chemists behind the greatest scientific fiasco of the past hundred years. Sun in a Bottle is the first major book to trace the story of fusion from its beginnings into the 21st century, of how scientists have gotten burned by trying to harness the power of the sun.